I found this site a few weeks ago and it inspired me to haul out my 8+ lbs of Legos, call a few friends, and set up a battle. The first one was with me and a friend of mine. The construction rules where what really interested me and my friend had a few box-set mech things gathering dust on a shelf so we made the following armies. (Sorry I don't have pictures, I can't find a digital camera that works.)

The battle lasted about 3 hours before we gave up and ended it "traditionally". In this time there were about... 10-15 turns and 3 casualties, none of them due to the constructs. My hero killed the pilot of O.R.A.N.G.E. with a heroic rocket-vault strike. About an hour later one of my soldiers died in an explosion (this one was technically due to a construct, as it was a critical failure of my hero trying to pilot the captured X-oh suit). In those 2 hours none of the big cool weapons hit once. I literally did more damage to the enemy constructs by climbing on top of them and getting a lucky shot with the buzz saw hand weapon on its exposed shoulder joint. In the last turn, realizing that his autocannon could do more damage as the 1 inch bot, the Harass-bot killed one of my unarmed soldiers. In that turn my twin linked 3 inch cannon hit. Finally! Some destruction! Only not really, the first hit didn't penetrate the R.E.D. suit's armor and while the second did we realized at the current rate of damage we would have to play a good 12 hours before someone won.

None of the minifigs, including my hero, could hit worth a damn with the big guns. Even with the average 4 bonus (aiming, stationary target, size 4) a d6 just can't make a 9 effectively. Furthermore, it turns out that it wasn't nearly enough damage to really do anything. In the best circumstances, there is only a 33% chance to hit, and after that you can only expect to do enough damage to harm the thing like 15% of the time, which you have to do SIX times in order to destroy it! I felt kind of cheap attacking the pilot directly in the first few rounds but by the end I realized that was the only way to expect to do any damage at all! Even if we bought bigger guns the penalty to hit would average out the bonus to damage.

Are we missing something here? Are big guns just for show? Is it really only effective to send boarding parties armed with hand weapons and explosives? I have no problems with changing the rules but I want to make sure that I am not missing something.

"I'm going to give you a ten second head start; if I catch you, I eat you."

Large weapons are only effective against very large targets. Can you imagine taking hits doing 5d6 of damage on minifigs? For a normal minifig, who we will assume rolls skill 4, in order to fire a size 5 gun the target must be 5' 6" in size (11 large target bonus). Small boarding parties and brawling on fast-moving vehicles is simply more effective. If you really want big weapons, give your guys skill boosts or have several working together.

youaredoome0 wrote:in order to fire a size 5 gun the target must be 5' 6" in size (11 large target bonus)

Where are you getting the +11? Large size is +1 for every 2". If you and the target are stationary then its another +2. Which means either a +4 or +5. The problem is that skill doesn't scale the same way. You get +0.5 to hit a target for every 1" and as weapons increase it gets 3 harder to use them for every 1". I'm not trying to hit minifigs here. Its just that a size 3+ cannon can't expect to hit anything at all (the max bonus you are going to get is +5 for size).

"I'm going to give you a ten second head start; if I catch you, I eat you."

okay, 3" non-explosive cannons have a UR of 9. still bonuses bring it down to 7. 7 is a totally managable skill roll - in fact, if you roll a 6, you're garunteed at LEAST a 7 due to bonus dice. regardless, you're best off against larger targets.

Yea, that seems right. It could be we just rolled poorly. It would have been a Use of 4 against R.E.D. I don't know. We are going to run another battle soon so we can see what happens. But still, the penalties given from using larger weapons are much too large to keep up. As your target gets larger you get a +0.5 per inch. Meanwhile, your Use Rating goes up by 3. This doesn't matter that much as the real problem is armor. Even if we cap it at 3d10, it just isn't likely that we are going to do any damage to each other.

Another problem might be that we don't have enough minifigs... at least compared to the armies I have seen on this site.

"I'm going to give you a ten second head start; if I catch you, I eat you."

well remember that 3d10 is TANK armor. that means 4srs armor plating from something that's solid steel and reinforced rivets, several inches thick in the thinnest sections. looking at the vehicles you had toting around, i'd put em mostly at 1d10, and maybe 2d10 at the most.

i'd definitely contribute this to low die rolls. i've managed to nail a minifig in the FACE from a size 3 gun, so you don't have much to worry about.

Yea, I was looking into the combined fire rules, but the problem is that I don't have that many minifigs... that match anyway. The next battle is planned tomorrow. I'll probably lower the armor on my units and add another vehicle+crew in. Thanks for the responses.

"I'm going to give you a ten second head start; if I catch you, I eat you."

I'm experimenting with a method to increase the skill of minifigs using an Area-Of-Effect Supernatural Power, mostly because I'm very frustrated with exactly the same problem you are having with low hit-rates on large weapons.

Barring that, just cover your vehicles with 2" guns. Yeah, they don't have very long range, but their hit rate makes up for it. You could even do something really novel and use those ghastly, short-range 1" guns.

you know, I've never really had a problem with huge guns, except for when i try a size 5 explosive weapon. but that's just ASKING for it.

in a thread around here we discussed possible uses for getting multiple minifigs to work together to operate big guns, increasing the accuracy. for individual figs, i've been using the idea that if they spend a turn aiming, minifigs gain +(weapon size) to skill. size 1 guns get +1, size 2 get +2, etc.